158 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 



growth in their gentle swellings and smooth fungus-like pro- 

 tuberances, their fluted sides, and regular hollows and slopes, 

 that carry at once the air of vegetative dilation and expansion. 



Or was there ever a time when these immense masses 



of calcareous matter were thrown into fermentation by some 

 adventitious moisture ; were raised and leavened into such shapes 

 by some plastic power ; and so made to swell and heave their 

 broad backs into the sky so much above the less-animated clay 

 of the wild below ? 



By what I can guess from the admeasurements of the hills 

 that have been taken round my house, I should suppose that 

 these hills surmount the wild at an average at about the rate of 

 five hundred feet. 



One thing is very remarkable as to the sheep : from the 

 westward till you get to the river Adur all the flocks have horns, 

 and smooth white faces, and white legs ; and a hornless sheep 

 is rarely to be seen : but as soon as you pass that river eastward, 

 and mount Beeding-hill, all the flocks at once become hornless, 

 or, as they call them, poll-sheep ; and have moreover black faces 

 with a white tuft of wool on their foreheads, and speckled and 

 spotted legs : so that you would think that the flocks of Laban 

 were pasturing on one side of the stream, and the variegated 

 breed of his son-in-law Jacob were cantoned along on the other 

 And this diversity holds good respectively on each side from 

 the valley of Bramber and Beeding to the eastward, and west- 

 ward all the whole length of the downs. If you talk with the 

 sfoepherds on this subject, they tell you that the case has been 

 so from time immemorial : and smile at your simplicity if you 

 ask them whether the situation of these two different breeds 

 might not be reversed. However, an intelligent friend of mine 

 near Chichester is determined to try the experiment ; and has this 

 autumn, at the hazard of being laughed at, introduced a parcel 

 of black-faced hornless rams among his horned western ewes. 

 The black-faced poll-sheep have the shortest legs and the finest 

 wool. 



As I had hardly ever before travelled these dov/ns at so late 

 a season of the year, I was determined to keep as sharp a look- 

 out as possible so near the southern coast, with respect to the 

 summer short- winged birds of passage. We make great enquiries 

 concerning the withdrawing of the swallow kind, without ex- 

 amining enough into the causes why this tribe is never to be 



